Kansas City’s multifamily market demonstrated its usual resilience to end 2024 despite local and national economic turbulence, according to Yardi Matrix’s December 2024 Kansas City multifamily report.
While the average U.S. advertised asking rent dipped 0.1% on a trailing three-month basis through October, the Kansas City, Missouri, market instead saw a modest 0.2% increase, bringing the average asking monthly apartment rent in the market to $1,301.
Need more evidence of this market’s strength? Yardi Matrix reported that on a year-over-year basis, the Kansas City market recorded monthly rent growth of 3.7%, among the strongest gains in large markets during this period.
Occupancy rates for stabilized properties also showed improvement, with a 20-basis-point year-over-year increase to 94.9% in October, reflecting strong demand for multifamily housing in the region.
Kansas City’s job market further bolstered the multifamily sector, with Yardi Matrix reporting that the market added 19,300 net jobs in the 12 months ending in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This 1.4% growth rate aligned with the national average, driven primarily by leisure and hospitality, which contributed 7,100 new positions. The unemployment rate in Kansas City stood at 3.4% as of October, 70 basis points below the average U.S. unemployment rate.
While new construction slowed in the Kansas City multifamily sector last year — as it did across the country — developers weren’t completely quiet. Yardi Matrix said that developers delivered 3,105 new apartment units across the Kansas City market during the first 10 months of 2024, while an additional 7,919 units remained under construction as of October.
Investment activity in Kansas City’s multifamily market has also declined, again like in most other large markets. Sales volume totaled just $294 million through October, according to Yardi Matrix. That marks the lowest this figure has been in over a decade. The slowdown aligns with national trends as higher interest rates and cautious investor sentiment slows transaction activity.
Despite these headwinds, Kansas City’s multifamily market remains an attractive prospect, thanks to its steady job growth, competitive occupancy rates and ongoing infrastructure projects.
